this is a simple guide on how to join the dtoid chromehounds team

first pick the republic of morskoj, if you don't you wont be able to find, or join the squad.

after reading all the crap, like so and so donated money and such and such attacked this place and blew it up (these are daily updates on the status of the war) select join/leave/manage/squad, select find a squad, and then search for DTOID, with password set to yes or any.

once you find the squad, select it and enter the password up, down, x, y.

thats it.

there are probably some steps in between like choosing your mech class, I reccomend anything but commander if you're just starting out. probably soldier is your most simple choice. I reccomend logging on a bit early from the time we start so you can get some parts and customize your mech a little bit, I'll be on to help tonight.

alright, so there is a mech game out there called chromehounds, it has a persistant online war going on between 3 different countries, you pick your alliance, and you get to choose what parts you get for your mech depending on your choice.

its fun, and you can play in a squad with six people, again other people, or ai, all in an effort to capture territory for your country. so, with the discovery of a few people on Dtoid that play chrome hounds, I believe we need a Dtoid squad.

you can have more than six people in a squad, but they cant all be in a game at once... I think.

a squad is the best way to play a game, because you can have people specialize in different roles that would be unthinkable playing by yourself


for instance

one person can be a commander, which has a huge radar antenna on his mech, which weighs a ton, so your movement, and weapon options are limited



or you can be a scout, who finds the enemies base for destruction, or finds and kills the enemies commander, generally very fast and lightly armed, can also easily capture comba's and other tasks that require speed.



another class is the heavy gunner, a sitting duck by himself, but with the support of a team, easily the strongest team member you can have, able to take out an entire squad by himself, using long range powerful artillery, barely moves, and is usually too focused on weapons to have much armor.



the defender is large, and heavily armored, and can take a hit, heavy, and strong its a more armored version of the soldier, however, it has less firepower and speed.

the soldier is one of two classes that I would recommend being if you play the game by yourself, average speed, decent firepower, and decent armor, a good place to start out in the chrome hounds world



the other class that I recommend for solo use is the sniper, not as fast as the soldier, but its range and firepower more than make up for that, my personal favorite of the crew, snipers are essential in a team, useful both for taking enemies out at great distances, and as a backup in case the troops that charge in get wiped out. not great at close up attacks, but still packing enough punch that getting close is usually fatal, as it means its near impossible to miss.



the next thing to pick is your nation, the three to choose from are the democratic republic or tarakia, the kingdom of sal kar, or the republic of morskoj, each having different parts and territory under their control at the start of the war.

tarakia is essential the various nations of western europe in a coalition, with backing from the united states theyve got decent weapons and decent prices, they also start the war with the most territory

sal kar is a kingom of middle eastern, and north African countries, with expensive but awesome parts, they pack a dangerous punch, but they start the war with the smallest portion of the territory.

the republic or morskoj, its basically a union of the countries that are no longer under russian control. parts are similar in price to tarakia, and are usually more obscure and customized instead of basic.

there are more things in the game but going through them would make this post, which is longer than I wanted it to be already, ridiculously long.

I'm in college three days a week, and don't have a job, so I have more than enough free time to play some chrome hounds at a moments notice.

the game was made by from software, same people who make armored core, and was published by sega. You can pick it up for under 20 dollars at your nearest game store.

highly reccomended

anyone interested in joining a Dtoid squad please let me know. voice chat is an absolute requirement, so if you don't have a mic, or don't like talking in games... then this is not a multiplayer game you will be interested in, without a mic how will the rest of your team know you got killed and that enemies are coming from x or y direction, or that we lost comba's e and f and that the enemy commander is in location 4a? see my point. so get a headset if you want to play this game online. its not your traditional competitive game where you scream obscenities and racial slurs at your opponents, in fact you don't even talk to your opponents.

since the cblogs are always getting clogged, here is the forum post.
http://www.destructoid.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=168104#168104

Heres a quote from an interview with kaz harai from the latest issue of the playstation official magazine
OPM: Were you surprised by the initial reaction from the community to the demand for vibration effects in the controller?
KH: More the longevity of the requests - it was consistent. It was clearly not something people were willing to let go - not a fad request. So after I got back to japan, I got the engineering guys, and said "look, I understand the technical issues... [involved in combining both rumb effects and the SIXAXIS motion in one controller] can we give it one more go and come up with a conclusion?"



also known as... look just throw some rumble on the SIXAXIS, we'll go settle the lawsuit with immersion so we can release it.

you see months ago Phil Harrison outright said that Sony lied about not being able to technically make a rumbling motion sensative controller (ahem wiimote) and said yeah, we cant do it because of the immersion suit. looks like no one told Kaz.

another fine day at Sony.



kaz loves you sony fanboys... enough to still lie to you, so as to not hurt your feelings.

edit: couldn't find the phil post about the lies but this will work too
http://www.destructoid.com/sony-and-immersion-kiss-and-make-up-ps3-to-have-rumble-now--30167.phtml

Hey dtoid, I haven't posted a blog for a good while since they've been made of fail but I am a forgiving soul and since the blogs over the last couple days haven't been too horrible... I'll make a new one for you.

alright, this is a new segment I'll be doing about once a week about games that the
average gamer has probably never heard about but were damn good nonetheless.



for the first game of the series I'm going to talk about WarTech: Senko no Ronde


the game is best described as a fighter shmupp, and while that may sound very odd, its quite well executed... you have long range shmupp battles, hurling tons of bullets at your enemy, and you've got close range fights where knowing your combo's will help... alot.

what kind of bullets may you ask? metal ones?


the game was made by the same people who worked on ikaruga and gradius 5, so if you've played either of those right there I probably just sold you.

if you haven't played at least one of those games, shame on you.

the game's storyline is a confusing fuckmash of various cutscenes and voice overs that serve to confuse you more than anything, in order to begin to understand the storyline its best to beat the game with every character and even then... its confusing. basically its the future and people have powered robotic exoskeletons called rounders, which can be modified for combat and space flight. some guy gets kidnapped and everyone is looking for him and the kidnapped guy is put into some super exoskeleton robot that you fight as the end boss depending on the character you choose.

there are nine characters in total, each controlling fairly differently from each other, with a slew of various freeze moves, flood the screen with bullet moves, and theres even a character who can teleport behind you then stab you.

now, the game isn't very long, it can be beaten with a single character in under an hour, so about nine hours total for the full game, there are some alternate modes and what not, mostly just modes that are remade from the Japanese arcade game its based on. there are unlockable bios for the characters and rounders and other things to help you understand the storyline and give some more background information. but most of it is just gravy on an otherwise good game.

alright, even if you're still skeptical at this point, this game does something I have always wanted in games... you can become a boss. you know the epic shmupp bosses that are the epitome of the genre? yeah, you get to become one. even though its only for a small period of time, its quite epic. with a pull of the triggers you'll receive your boss add on to your rounder and will take up anywhere from a 1/4th to 1/2 of the screen. your enemy must hang on for dear life while you pummel them with gigantic missiles and various kinds of lasers.

there is one last thing I need to say about this game...


but get it fast since the game is no longer being made.

overall the gameplay is great, the story is crap and the multiplayer is epic
8/10

I wish more unusual Japanese titles got released over here...

and if you didn't like my review... aaron talks about it here

electro lemon the famed community attention whore... we all love him, and if you don't then you probably can't take a joke or got tired of his 14 year old antics(or played cod4 beta with him, seriously he sucks)
while searching through youtube tehuber0ne and myself both agreed...
this is lemon in 30 years, all the way down to the fake teeth he uses for some god awful effect.

HD trailer for you viewing pleasure